About Latin Roots

Nuevofest 2018

Latin Roots: Alejandro y MarÃ­a Laura

The husband-and-wife duo's soft-pop debut went top-10 in Peru. Hear the two play a live set onstage in Philadelphia.

The married singer-songwriters Alejandro Rivas and MarÃ­a Laura Bustamante met in college but didn't start making music together as Alejandro y MarÃ­a Laura until five years later, in 2009. Their different interests - Rivas was in a Led Zeppelin cover band and Bustamante studied theatre - somehow combined into the sophisticated soft-pop of their 2011 debut, ParacaÃ­das. The album went top-10 in Peru, their home country, but Rivas says that might not have been on the strength of their music alone. "Most of the press in Peru were talking about us being a couple and really cute, not about the songs, I guess, and the artwork of the album," he says in this interview. "And we thought they missed the point completely, you know."